Allan Jones

I live in Ontario, Canada but was born and grew up in Merseyside, England. A lifelong reader of fiction, I started writing my own novels in 2013. Initially, I was unsure about delving into creative fiction after a scientific career, but quickly found it absorbing and enjoyable. I still do.

I set my first novel, 'The Chinese Sailor' in North Wales, around Bangor (where I attended university), and the Menai Strait. The main character developed for that story, Catrin Sayer, is an ordinary police officer from South Wales about to enter plainclothes work. She has now appeared in a series of ten mystery stories, as her life and career have developed. In ‘The Tavistock Lieutenant’, the final novel in the series, Sayer has reached the rank of superintendent. Suddenly given responsibility for a team investigating two violent deaths, she places her career at risk to enable them to make politically sensitive arrests.

More recently, I started a trilogy set mainly in the Cumbria Lake District, with part of the first novel set in Ontario. Two main characters, Harriet Calder, a police officer, and Susan Carlson, an addiction counsellor, feature in each novel. Parts I and II are published: 'Canons' and 'Compline'. The final novel, 'Chalice', is in preparation.

I draw most of the story locations from personal experience, from living in the UK or sometimes from travels during my professional career.

My goal has been - and still is - to produce a set of interesting crime stories about people, not stereotypes, whether they are the detective, the villain of the piece, or the victim.